Posted
by
Soulskillon Friday March 12, 2010 @04:48PM
from the leaving-a-mark dept.

Phrogman writes "The BBC is reporting that deforestation has 'revealed what could be a giant impact crater in Central Africa, scientists say. The 36-46km-wide feature, identified in DR Congo, may be one of the largest such structures discovered in the last decade.' If you search Google Maps for 'Omeonga Democratic Republic of the Congo,' you will be right in the middle of the suspected crater."

But seriously, my GF in college worked with Chris Reeves at the Williamstown Theater Festival, and she said he was the nicest, most supportive and hard working actor she's ever met. He would thank the freaking techs! He would run lines with interns fer chrissake!

He got thrown from his horse the summer after that, we were both pretty sad for the man.

Actually, it's not Mother Nature that is wanting us to leave, it's Father Nature. He's been trying for several millenia to get some "alone time" with Ma Nature.

That's right, humans and animals are all essentially cock-blocking Father Nature from getting some. He's finally pissed off enough to do something about it (earthquakes, global warming, tsunamis, etc), especially since he started taking Viagra.

But the criticism is still valid. I would have to add 'reproduce her on other planets that do not already harbor life' although, as long as we are anthropomorphizing Mother Nature, I don't think the bitch would care if we offed other biospheres in order to reproduce her.

But we're also her conscience as well as her eggs, so I think we should care. It's also logical, and in our self interest. Who knows when we might meet a superior race? If we have proven that we can

Well, at least that landscape would be improved by a couple of hundreds of meteor impacts... On a more serious note - such irrigation patterns seriously freaked me out on my first flight to the US. I've never seen anything like that in Europe.

It is kind of hard to make a straight-line irrigation beam extend and contract to form a hexagon as it goes around. These plots are irrigated from underground aquifers. There's a well in the middle and then a long irrigation beam that goes in a circle around the well. The pressure is controlled so the sprinkler heads near the middle release less water (since they cover less ground).

What he means is that if each section was hexagon in shape, you could still use the same type of watering system, but dramatically reduce the area in the corners that the watering system misses.

In an attempt to answer his question, there are a few possible reasons (of many more, I'm sure) that I can come up with. It might be inconvenient to lay out hexagonal access roads that form the borders of these sections. This also most likely stems from initial property plots being given out in square segments and

GP presumably meant, pack the circles into hexagons instead of squares.
Property lines and roads, however, tend to have been drawn in squares and rectangles in the American West, being based on Thomas Jefferson's ideal revival of the Roman Empire who fixated on right angles.

There are circle irrigation fields in Saudi Arabia, of all places. I found them by wandering around in Google Maps -- "what's this dark spot in the middle of the desert??" zoomed in, and lo and behold, it was a big patch of circle irrigators!

I've been told by someone who lived there that the isolated location helps avoid crop destruction by feral goats and other critters, not to mention that there's no need for pest control of any sort.

Something that let you zoom in and out let you feel the proper magnitude of both the impact, and the deforestation around. Probably the scale of deforestation should had made the headlines, not the impact crater, our past is interesting, but is much more our (lack of?) future.

I would expect a meteor impact to look more like this http://goo.gl/1gcU [goo.gl] but maybe just because it's the only one I've seen in person. According to Google Earth the whole area is pretty flat with exception of the circle of depressed area where there is now a river.

Maybe it's some kind of ancient moat around a giant collapsed culture. The Chinese built a wall - what's to say an ancient culture didn't do the opposite and dig a trench.

Well, if it's old enough it could very well be filled in by dirt and soil and the edges could have been eroded. Given the position of sun in the image there is no distinct elevation change in the image.

If you look at the region with more than a passing "gee, neat" glance, you will notice that a stream winds its way around what should be the highest apparent point, the rim. Since when do rivers or creeks follow the rims of craters?

It would be far better to use Google Earth to view it, which should provide elevation data for points under the mouse, unlike Google Maps. I'd also like to see it in NASA's World Wind, which allows viewing the same region with imagery from multiple different (satellite) sources

Goddamn! It's a good thing you were here to notice that and saved a whole lot of people some pointless field work at the site.Also good evidence that you didn't RTFA, which directly addressed this point.

Here's another location of a crater in Mexico: do a search for "ciudad de carmen." The caves that exist in this area were formed from a meteor impact, and the caves exist along the edge of the impact. It creates a ring formation in the area, and it was also only recently discovered. Half of the crater is in the water, the other half of the crater is on land. Also, very close to this area, people theorize that the "gulf of mexico" was an impact crater that might've caused the dinosaurs to die. The yuca

Additionally, I noticed another crater site that is near "la trinitaria" in Mexico. This lake is pretty circular looking and either was formed from a caldera or impact crater. Half of it is filled in by volcanic activity

It creates a ring formation in the area, and it was also only recently discovered. Half of the crater is in the water, the other half of the crater is on land. Also, very close to this area, people theorize that the "gulf of mexico" was an impact crater that might've caused the dinosaurs to die. The yucatan peninsula sure has an odd shape, and in the water, it almost forms a circle around the gulf of mexico.

Are you talking about Chicxulub, mentioned in the sidebar in TFA and half in the Gulf? That's the on

I believe the ring starts around "el vapor" lake to the east, and it goes SW towards "jesus maria," "Tasejero"...then north towards "frontera." A whole bunch of underwater caves line the area and they believe the edge of the caves exist at the edge of the impact crater.

Russia? You're right though, it does. I wonder why the URL in the link lists Bethesda Maryland? I recall seeing a recent program on the History Channel that pointed out a probable impact crater, I believe around the Chesapeake Bay, and that the after effects of the impact lead to the extinction of the large mammals that used to roam North America (giant sloths, saber-toothed cats, mammoths, etc,).

Doesn't look particularly craterish to me, on eastern or western margins. There is a known crater in the area (http://maps.google.com/?ll=67.5,172.08&z=9), and the area is hardly unexplored, so I doubt that you've picked up anything remarkably new.I don't see anything terribly interesting on OneGeology either, structural un